


Rescue Mission

by where_am_i_am_here



Category: Zombies Run!
Genre: Action, Female Runner Five, Hurt/Comfort, Multi, Mute Runner Five, Whump, car chasing, someone gets bitten
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-13
Updated: 2017-09-02
Packaged: 2018-09-24 02:48:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 5
Words: 14,121
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9696344
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/where_am_i_am_here/pseuds/where_am_i_am_here
Summary: Runner Five has been disconnected from home for more than a day now... when a sudden sign of life calls to action.---Major S4 spoilers. This fic serves as a side storyline at almost any point between mid-S4 and S6.





	1. I will bring you home

Someone was gasping, panting, thumping rhythmic steps shattering through the tiny mechanics in the headset. One of his runners. They’re out there. He had to watch them, had to lead them home. But where were they? The screen in front of him was dark, reflecting his own image. Why was it dark? Why couldn’t he look after them? He had to do something. He talked and talked, and his mouth was moving, but his voice got stuck somewhere in his throat, so he tried shouting, although he couldn’t even hear himself.

The runner on the other end was desperately trying to catch their breath, and then a loud thud hit the mic and- 

-he flinched, his eyes flying open at the sound of his arm knocking over his coffee mug. 

Sam groaned, as if the object somehow was at fault. It was a childish sentiment, and he was aware of that himself so it didn’t last long. He just wanted to be angry out of spite. At least, he thought, he hadn’t made more of a mess on his desk, since he had already emptied the cup hours ago. 

Obviously it hadn’t done a thing. He had still fallen asleep. 

Yawning Sam stretched his arms over his head – they felt fuzzy from resting his head on them – and ran his hand through his hair where his fingers got stuck on the headset he was still wearing. 

More than 24 hours had passed now but he wasn’t ready to take it off yet. Sam was surprised no one had come in to drag him out of the shack. Maybe no one could be bothered; maybe no one else wanted to accept it. Maybe everyone turned out to be just as avoidant of the facts as he was, even the people who were usually strict about these kinds of situations.

Five had always come back, _somehow_. She had always found a way.

Well, it had seemed like it. Until now.

Until the goddamn communication system broke down on them and Sam had no idea why and how it could happen. Until they – he – lost her, right when it was apparent she needed them most, left on her own with those sounds and shadows she was talking about just before she was gone. 

He had wanted to see and hear them, too. If anybody were to ask him, he’d be inclined to say he did; even against his better judgement and probably even though anybody could tell his sorry attempt at lying. 

Who knew what was going on inside her head after everything that had happened to her? Five never admitted anything like it in front of him – seeing and hearing things that only she noticed – and neither have Janine or Maxine because it wasn’t their part to disclose that kind of sensitive information towards him. He didn’t blame them, of course. Really, he knew, it was none of his business after all. If she wanted to tell him, she could come by anytime, he had made that clear more than once. But how long did she want to- _had_ she wanted to-

Sam buried his face in his hands and shook his head a few times, trying to shake the thoughts off, out of his brain. He had to let it go. They all had done everything they could. Did they? It was no use trying to blame someone for this, and objectively he understood that. He did, although it was hard.

Not like the irrational part of him cared. 

He rubbed his burning eyes, took a deep breath and finally stared at the screen in front of him. 

All runners were home, checked off today’s list just a few hours ago. (All but one.) The whole team had been running searches from sunrise to sundown, in every direction – even the runners who were supposed to be off-duty and even into the areas that were usually off-limits. It’s been a long and exhausting day for everyone. Tomorrow they could give it another shot.

If Janine would even let them get that far. 

Sam could practically hear her in his head, talking about all the other problems Abel currently needed to work out. And by that she mainly meant their preparations for winter, although it was still August. It was just one point on their neverending to-do-list to ensure township survival.

And, while she hadn’t been extremely high up on it from the beginning, Five dropped down that list, spot by spot, with every passing hour. 

A raspy breath right in his ear made him jump in his chair, and for a second he expected someone slid in the room to sneak up on him; but when he turned around it was empty and the door was closed shut. His heart was beating in his throat, and he got slightly dizzy because of the sudden movement.

What the-

His fingers slid over his ear, over the earplug, the headset. 

Was it still on?

Or was he starting to imagine things? He was running on roughly three hours of sleep, yes. But wasn’t it a little early for hallucinations?

Another gasp coming through the static, something rustling. 

Sam could swear what he heard on the other end had to be movement. Maybe leaves crunching on the ground as they were stepped on; maybe someone fiddling with their headset or putting their hair behind their ears; but they were there.

“Five?”, he whispered without thinking.

The rustling stopped. Tapping, fingers sliding over the mic. 

_Yes_ , Five answered in their code, and Sam immediately jumped up from his office chair, almost knocking it over. It rolled across the room and came to a halt as it hit the wall.

“Oh my god, Five! You’re alive!” He put his hands over his face and started walking in circles as far as the cord allowed it, forcing himself to do pretty much anything besides crying and freaking out, so he ended up half-laughing. “Oh, this is- bloody amazing! It’s so good to-“ He took a breath. “I’m so happy you’re still here. I mean- wow.”

_Yes_ , she tapped again and Sam sighed.

Okay. She was there – she was alive – and she was awake and moving and answering, but- He looked up at the screen with the digital map of their usual working grounds. 

“Where are you?”, he asked, a tad more serious now. He had to concentrate. Yes, she had come back and he couldn’t be more excited about it, but it was also a second chance he could under no circumstance blow. He had to make sure she _stayed_ alive as well. “Your headcam isn’t sending pictures, and I can’t see you on the map.”

Her steps got clearer and more distinguished with every second, as if she was slowly coming out of a fog. _Broke cam_ , Five answered.

Maybe then her GPS transmitter was also broken… No, why would she be able to talk to him then? It was in the headset. If one function broke down, the other would go with it. He started zooming out the map. Second by second the perimeter increased, and so did the distance between her and home.

Finally he stopped.

„Found you.“

A blinking red light had showed up on the screen, in the far left upper corner; northwest from Abel. 77,5 kilometers from Abel to be exact. No wonder the runners hadn’t found Five yet. She was heading in the right direction now, but if she had come from even further away than that… They simply wouldn’t have been able to find her. Not today, maybe not even tomorrow, if she’d have happened to get even more lost. 

Sam started to wonder how she even survived that long, how she got that far away from them, what happened to her all this time. What the noises she heard were about, before the connection broke- He had to save it for later. For when she was here again. 

But she wouldn’t be able to make it on her own. 

“You’re slow”, Sam noted as he watched the barely moving dot on the screen, unable to hide the worry in his voice. “You probably didn’t sleep but, are you- Are you hurt?”

_Not bitten_ , Five replied. 

‘But hurt’, Sam finished in his head. He clenched his teeth, again angry at- himself, mostly. Focus, focus, focus. “Can you see anything around you? You’re about to reach the end of the forest you’re in… Do you have something to defend yourself until we get to you, Five?”

For almost a minute all Sam heard were Five’s slurring steps and a slight wheezing. She wasn’t even running anymore. _Clear_ , was the only answer she gave. 

Sam had to accept it. 

“Okay. So, listen… I’ll be back in a few minutes, alright? I’ll get Janine, and- and Maxine and maybe some more- We’ll- It’ll be fine, we can work it out, but-“

A thump, and then fabric scratching and scraping over something; Five was leaning against a tree. 

“Hey!”, Sam raised his voice and almost startled himself. It sounded hollow. “Five, please, you need to keep moving. I know- actually, no, I’m not sure I know how it feels. How you feel. Still, you need to keep going. No matter at what pace.”

Five didn’t reply, but soon enough her steps started again and Sam unclenched his grip on the edge of the desk. 

\--- 

Janine was leaning over some documents, sitting on the ground in her scarcely decorated room. Sam had initially thought how strange it was to look at, considering this whole farm had actually been hers from the very beginning; so it would be logical that, out of all the residents, she had most of her things left to keep. At least enough of them to make a room a little more personal. Over time, and considering the very few occasions he had dared to peek in through the door behind her, he had started to notice that it did have some character, albeit not very openly visible. 

Like the mat in the middle of the room: her command center, in some way. Her place to think. For some reason, sitting on the ground helped her focusing and working strategically. Currently she had one candle lantern next to her providing light as she studied the building plans for the training grounds, which were supposed to be stocked up and renewed soon. But it was already late and the numbers started to switch places. Janine rubbed her eyes, letting her mind fastforward-replay the last few days. The apparent- no, simply the loss of one of their finest runners – and friends –

A frantic knocking interrupted her. “Janine! Are you in?” More knocking. 

Forcefully she pulled the door open, glancing at the visitor who came up in the middle of the night to disturb her. She almost let out a sigh. Of course there was no way she’d not know this voice.

“Mr. Yao, this better be import-“

“It’s Five”, he breathed out, a smile slipping over his face and a short laugh escaping his chest. “She’s alive! She’s there, I talked to her. We need to get her-“

Sam stopped when he saw the look in her eyes.

Janine crossed her arms in front of her chest and turned her gaze to the ground. Her voice was almost soft; unusually so, he noticed. “How long have you been awake?”

“I- I’m perfectly fine, Janine”, he replied somewhat offended. But he had no patience, no time to spend being mad about her questioning his sanity. Actually, it made sense to ask him that, he had to admit – instead of talking about it though he turned on his heels, gesturing at her to follow him. “Just come with me and you can see for yourself.”

\--- 

Janine blinked once. Twice. The dot was still there. 

She hadn’t slept much either… Though that was hardly an argument in her case, as someone who was used to not sleeping more than five hours, ever.

“Here.” Sam handed her the headset and rolled the chair over to her. “You should talk to her while I’ll get Maxine. I sure think Five wouldn’t mind some company…” 

He was out the door before she could answer.

Janine stared at the device in her hand as if she saw it for the first time. Then she put it on. 

The first thing she heard from the other side was strained huffing, and slow, dragging steps. In all honesty, the sound of this didn’t strike her as hopeful as Sam had led her to believe. If anything, Five seemed barely alive.

“Five? This is Janine.”

She’d have almost interpreted the tapping rhythm on the mic as Five being excited. Immediately the breathing became quieter – most likely because she tried to not let her exhaustion show.

“Glad to hear you.” Janine sounded stiff, admittedly even to her own ears, but she always meant what she said. In fact she hadn’t allowed herself to hope hearing her again; the circumstances had been too overwhelming to be sentimental. Still, she had only unsuccessfully tried pushing down that sentimentality. Finally she cleared her throat, coming back to the matters on hand. 

“You’re- I’m not sure what Sam told you but you’re still more than 70 kilometers away from us. It seems we have no access to cameras where you are. Are you still in the forest? You should be close to getting out of it”, Janine deduced from what she saw on screen. 

_Blood_ , Five tapped, and Janine wanted to dig into what she meant by that as she already continued, adding _Zoms_.

“Are you telling me you’re bleeding and you think you attract zombies?”, Janine summarized. “Can you speed up? Are there any fast-“

_Hide._

The door behind Janine flew open and Jody stumbled in headfirst, running up to the screen and looking at the red dot with glistening eyes. Her hair was still wet and she was wearing what seemed to be her sleeping clothes. Apparently she hadn’t found any rest either. “Is that- She’s- She’s really-“ She turned to Janine who had stopped still in her tracks, her voice slightly hoarse in wonder. “Janine, Five’s _alive_!”

“I see that, Ms. Marsh“, Janine replied dryly. 

“Let’s work on keeping that up, right?”, Sam added, entering the room with Maxine behind him. 

Her steps slowed as she approached the desk, stopped next to Jody, and looked up at the screen. Her expression barely changed when she turned away from the monitor and stared at Janine; she was all furrowed brows and tired eyes and thin lips, and Janine knew, the doctor didn’t want to think what she thought, but she couldn’t help it. Although Sam’s and Jody’s optimism made her hesitant, she needed to point it out. Her voice was low when she finally spoke. 

“Is it really Five?”

“What do you mean?”, Sam asked, before Janine had even a chance to give an answer. 

“I mean”, Maxine turned to him, a certain stress in the way she pronounced her words. “I wouldn’t hold my hopes up. Not yet, not so much, at least.” She gestured towards the screen, and to him it was resembling more of a throw-away motion. “She has been missing for more than a whole day, in unknown territory. And we don’t know how far the cognitive abilities of S-types really-“

“You think, she’d still know our code? That- that S-types can even communicate clearly?”, Jody concluded without turning to her. 

“I’m saying we don’t know what they _can_ do.”

She didn’t want to feel that way and she knew no one wanted to think about it, but she also had to make sure they weren’t more hurt in the end. But suddenly – of course only after she already said it out loud – she felt like a hypocrite as she remembered her own behavior when she was looking for Paula. 

“You haven’t even talked to her yourself”, Sam quietly said.

As if that were her cue Janine spoke into the mic, resuming the dialogue from before. “Five, can you hear me? Did you hide?”

Five’s answer came almost unbearably late. 

_Clear._

“No one’s around then?” 

_No. Clear._

Janine nodded. Her eyes were focused on the red, barely advancing dot. 76,8 kilometers left. Judging by the panting in her ears, the fact that it was the middle of the night, the number of hours Five had been on her feet, the general state of her health regarding she had mentioned blood – it was evident she physically couldn’t make it back alone. 

“Okay, Five. I will bring you home.”


	2. I guess, ‘used to be light grey’ counts?

Ignoring the frantic tapping in her ear, Janine stood up and handed the headset to a bewildered Jody. She needed to get going, fast, there was no more time to lose. In her head, she started listing all the preparations and steps to go by, ignoring the overlapping voices around her: 

Get a suitable car, preferably already equipped with a first-aid kit and enough; water bottles; a blanket… 

A hand on her arm stopped her in the doorway.

“I understand your concern, Dr. Myers,” Janine said before the doctor could even so much as express her doubts, “but I need to see it for myself – in any case, for better or worse.”

“Is this going to be a one-man-show then?” Maxine asked, a certain resignation blending into her voice. 

“She’s not going alone.”

Both women turned to Sam with vastly different expressions of disbelief on their faces. For a few seconds, the room was only filled with Jody softly murmuring into the headset.

Maxine was the first to break out of it.

“Wow, now this is really a bad idea,” she almost laughed, letting her arms drop to her sides. “I truly don’t like seeing Janine heading out alone but-”

“Mr. Yao, there is absolutely no need for you to leave the township,” Janine interfered with as much patience in her voice as she could come up with.

“I need to see it for myself, too!” Sam involuntarily blurted out, louder than intended.

Jody had turned around to watch all three of them but kept talking to Five while leaning on the desk behind her.

He took a deep breath as he tried to settle the feeling of his stomach dropping and his blood rushing in his ears. “I need to see whether it’s really her or not. With my own eyes. Besides-” He chuckled, a hint of hollowness swinging in the sound. “-it’s not like the zoms can do much to me, can they? Apart from…” His voice and gaze trailed off for a second, but quickly he raised his head again. “And, I mean, you really shouldn’t go alone! If Five can barely walk, someone should be there to have your back, both of yours. Right, Maxine?”

“… Are you trying to make me convince her that you can join her on this?”

“There’s at least a dozen people more qualified – especially in terms of combat – to come with me, Mr. Yao.”

“Are they available?” 

Janine replied with no more than a tiny twitch in her furrowed brows. Annoyingly for her, Sam didn’t allow himself to be intimidated by her stance, keeping his fists clenched by his sides. He didn’t seem to change his mind soon. 

A small part, way back in her head, didn’t want him to. 

“We can’t waste any more time, you- _we all_ know that,” Sam continued. “So… let’s just go?” 

He turned around without waiting for an answer, reached into a cupboard behind Jody from where he pulled out two headsets, and looked at the runner. “Can you keep up the communication?”

She stared back at him, eyes wide, surprised by the sudden action. “I- I guess I remember some things, but I don’t know if-”

“Yeah.” He dragged the word nonchalantly, and she couldn’t help but think he tried to downplay the whole situation. Or at least the way he was involving himself right now. “I’m sure you can do it. While we’re out you can work out the cams? It shouldn’t be long until Five gets into our range again, where you can sort of see her – from a distance at least. And we’ll take these.” Sam raised the headsets and waved them in Janine’s general direction. “So, we always stay in touch.”

Jody frowned. She had covered the mic with her hand before he’d even stepped up to the desk. “You’re the operator, Sam, not me. Don’t you think I want to know – and see – Five, too? Wouldn’t it be better if I go inst-”

“How long have you been out to look for her today, Jody?”

Somehow Jody couldn’t tell whether he was just being selfish right now or whether he really didn’t want to risk her as a runner as well. Maybe – probably, in a confusing, twisted way – both. She clenched her teeth. 

“Nine hours. With a one-hour break,” he answered his own question, when she kept quiet. “I’ve just been sitting here all this time. My chances of not becoming all-out physically exhausted are better than yours.”

While what he said was technically true, he hadn’t been “just sitting”. Guiding twenty-something people through different areas, all at the same time, all the same ten hours, was more than that. But as Jody braced herself to express these thoughts directly to his face, she could already see how it would play out. 

He knew it damn well himself. Even if she tried to argue about it, he’d keep on soft-pedalling his role, just so he could say that now – by going out with Janine – he could finally do something tangible. He wouldn’t let go off his decision.

Jody sighed, relaxed her shoulders, and slumped into the chair. 

“Well,” she said, raising her head into his direction as she pointed at her hand still covering the microphone. “I need to get back to Five, so – what are you guys waiting for?”

\--- 

The car – one of a total of three they had collected in their whole time as a township – slowly pulled up to the gates. It was a rather old model, one of those where its windows could only be opened by manually operating ridiculously resisting plastic handles. Scratches of all varieties were scattered across the black paint, and only one of the front lights was still functioning. 

The main point though was that it would get them from A to B and back to A. 

A faint smell of cold cigarette smoke lingered in the air when Janine and Sam took their seats. Sam noted a shotgun, a bat and an axe placed on the backseat, on top of a rough looking blanket, and a first-aid kit as well as four large water bottles under his own. Amazingly enough, someone – most likely Janine herself – had thought of preparing the car, so they could head out without losing too much time. 

“Janine de Luca herself is in there,” Jody sourly argued with the guards as Janine rolled down her window and wordlessly stuck out her head. “There. See? Now. Open the gates.” A flush of authority swung in Jody’s voice. It wasn’t the first time he heard it. 

The gates opening so late at night, when most people were sleeping, sounded unreal. Kind of like a thunderstorm ominously rolling in from miles away, accompanied by emergency sirens, making you wonder who called for the ambulance and who needed it. Maybe it was also the filtering through the car which made the situation around them seem so remote. It was just a rare occasion after all, for both of them, to leave the walls of Abel Township.

According to the map they had seen on the monitor and the actual real-life one they had brought, their way to Five was for the most part about simply following the main roads. In theory, at least; they couldn’t account for unforeseeable accidents blocking the street.

The road in front of them was eerily empty but that was hardly a bad thing. There would be just enough of the undead blocking their way the closer they got to Five. 

“Hey- so…” Jody came back after a long, silent while of driving down into the darkness. “I think I remembered how to connect different headsets. Both of you should be able to hear Five now as well. I think- I’m pretty sure she has something to say to you. In the meantime, I’ll be here trying to find some cams to use in her area. So...”

Tapping resumed before neither Janine nor Sam could even begin to ask something. 

_Dangerous._ One of the expressions Five also commonly liked to signify the word “stupid”, which was – if Sam had to guess – the intention here.

_No. Sam. No. Janine._

“Five, you don’t get to say that as long as you’re out there yourself,” he said without accusing her. Defiance from her side was to be expected. Of course, she’d insist on pretending that she could still manage running 70 kilometers back home. 

Of course, she was stubborn like that. It had helped her getting through everything so far.

“Oh!” Jody suddenly exclaimed. “I think I’m picking you up on a long-range cam, Five. You’re… very far away from it though. Can barely see you. I mean- yet.” She paused. “At least I think that’s you? I’m… pretty sure that’s you.”

“Light grey shirt?” Janine asked and Sam couldn’t help but notice a cruelly ironic pun in those words. 

“I guess, ‘used to be light grey’ counts?” Jody cleared her throat. “Oh, oh, there’s something else. Two zoms approaching from the north-east, three from the west. You’ll walk right into them or they’ll walk into you if you don’t hurry up, Five.”

 _Hide_ , Five tapped and her steps grew faster. _Tree._

Suddenly something clicked, so faintly that only Sam recognized it, because of all the times he had used this comms function himself.

“Sam, Janine, I’m talking just to you two now,” Maxine said. For the most part she sounded like she usually did – calm, thoughtful, unrushed. And she hoped it would stay that way and that nobody else heard how the back of her throat was closing up and how she couldn’t shake off that sinking feeling in her stomach. “When you spoke with her, Five said she wasn’t bitten?”

“You think she was?” Sam asked. Janine side-glanced at him, watching his fingertips tirelessly tug at a loose thread on the end of his sleeve. “What makes you think that?”

“She’s still too far away for us to be able to see her face properly, so I can’t say for sure. I- Jody and me, we do see her holding her left side, though. There is some blood but obviously I can’t make out where the actual wound is and how it looks and how much it really bleeds. If it still does. It’s impossible to see from here.”

Janine and Sam didn’t answer. 

“I just… wanted to let you know. Jody, you can- yes, tune Five back in.” There was another tiny click and Jody continued talking to the runner as if nothing happened.

“Five!” she exclaimed, masking her worry almost perfectly. In fact, she sort of imitated the way Sam would talk to the runners if their situation got rough on the field, with the exception that Jody was a better liar. “You’re almost at-”

A thump interrupted her, followed by a sharp inhale. Sam flinched, the mental image of the injury Maxine had outlined still vividly in mind. 

“Oh, you tripped,” Jody muttered in sympathy. “Are you- Okay, you’re getting up. You’re doing great, just keep going. You’ll be alright, no zoms very close to you. Yet. So… Hey, I can almost see your face now, you’re not far from the cam anymore. And there’s a perfectly good tree already! Yes, the one you’re pointing at is going to work fine!”

Janine could just imagine the look on Maxine’s face right now. Climbing a tree with the kind of wound she supposed it was, was rather reckless. But the doctor didn’t chime in. Most likely because getting her off the ground was the only way they had to get her out of immediate zombie-range, and because reminding Five of her allover state could prove to be destructively demoralizing for that exact plan. Better not to speak about it.

“All you have to do is get up there and Janine and Sam will be with you in no time.”

“Right,” Sam affirmed just a tad too late. His mind had trouble getting over the hurdle of thinking about Five’s bloodied shirt combined with her stumbling and labored breathing. “Right, Five! We’re almost there.” He stared at the light the one remaining lightbulb casted, at how it illuminated the bumpy road and the things that caused it to be bumpy, and hoped it could burn the image out of his brain. “Soon.”

It took painfully long minutes of listening to her breathing, and fabric and skin scratching over the bark, all the sounds barely covered by Jody’s and Sam’s attempts to cheer on Five, until she reached high enough ground and found a spot to sit on without immediately falling over again. 

“You’ll be okay up there,” Jody reassured, to both Five and everyone else. 

“It’s really not long anymore.” Sam felt like all he did was repeating himself. Wasn’t there something useful he could say? Normally he would ramble about anything to distract someone if he needed to, so why didn’t it work now? Why was his mind stuck on that mental image, ever since Maxine described-

“How are you, Five?” Janine asked. 

_Not bitten_ , the runner reiterated her message from before. She was still trying to make her point come across, her insistence on ‘I’m fine, I don’t need help, stop getting yourself into trouble for me.’ Then she took a shuddering breath and just for a short moment her teeth chattered. 

“How did you get all the way over there?” Janine continued, not taking her eyes off the road. “What happened to you since the communications system broke down?”

 _Running_ , Five answered after a pause in which everybody started suspecting she had slipped into unconsciousness.

Maxine fumbled with the cord of her headset and frowned; only replying via code took too much time and there was no way they could get actual sound answers to rather complicated questions by using such general phrases. The only hope she had was that at least it should help in keeping Five awake.

_People._

“Someone we know?” Janine asked, keeping her voice steady.

 _Unsure_ , Five tapped and took a deep breath. 

“Oh!” Jody let out. “Oh, I just saw your car on one of the cams! You’re almost there, guys!”

Sam turned to look out of the window. Mostly pine trees were lining the sides of the street, barely outlined shadows against the night sky. Their car was the only light source in the area. 

“Do you think they’re still out there?” he asked Janine, covering the mic. “The- whoever was after Five?”

“Would be all the more reason to get her back, wouldn’t it?” she said, one hand on her mic as well, one on the steering wheel. Then she let go off her headset. “Jody, in which direction are we supposed to go?”

“You’re right where you are,” she answered. “If you go a little slower… There, on your left side, there’s currently three zoms coming out from behind the tree line.”

“I see them.” Sam sat up straight. “Three’s nothing.”

“Well, it won’t stay three,” Jody said flatly. “Alright, so, Five’s close to the outer edge of the forest. You should find her quickly. And- Wha-”

A chair scratching across the ground, the wooden one that Maxine brought into the shack for herself, then both Jody and Maxine muttering.

“I could swear-“ Maxine started. “I could swear I just saw something hushing by that cam.”

“Fast zom, you think?” Jody asked. “Which direction did it go?”

“I just saw it out of the corner of my eye. It was roughly going like this.” She drew a line across the monitor with her finger. “From the lower edge of the screen to the right side, around that corner. But- It was way faster than any zombie.”

“Whatever it was-” Janine stopped the car without turning off the sputtering engine. “We’re here now.” 

She looked past Sam out of the window, her eyes as dark as the deep forest.

Then she turned to grab the shotgun.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm still here!  
> No I didn't abandon it!  
> I'm sorry... the aforementioned Bachelor's thesis got in the way. I'm all done now, though, and ready to update this fic more frequently :)
> 
> I know, this is still more of a talking chapter but as you can see the action will come in very soon!
> 
> Thanks for sticking around, and, if you're coming in new to this, thank you for giving this a chance. I'm very happy to get to know what you think about it!


	3. Did you say something about someone else joining us?

“The- the gun?” Sam stammered, while Janine inspected the shotgun chamber with a swift, experienced motion. “Don’t you want to go for something, I don’t know… quieter?”

“I don’t _intend_ to shoot anything, Mr. Yao, but I prefer having the option to do so when push comes to shove.” 

She opened the glove locker beside him, took out two flashlights, and gave one to him. 

“Now: I’ll go ahead and you’ll keep an eye out for Five. When you find her, you’ll get her down her tree and to the car, as fast as you can manage. Don’t get distracted or worried about the zoms, I’ll take care of them. Understood?”

“… Uhm- I mean-”

“Seriously, Sam. Leave them to me.”

“… Okay,” Sam nodded and looked away from her; except he was far from okay with letting Janine do exactly the thing he used as argument for his own usefulness in this mission: being immune and therefore more dispensable as at least short-term-defense against the undead. There was no way she had forgotten, given the way he had went about it. 

He absent-mindedly tapped the flashlight. “Totally… understood.”

The night air was cool and surprisingly fresh, a scent of pine and moss carrying in the breeze coming from the forest. Janine wondered how much she could have enjoyed this place if it were for another occasion, say, illuminated by daylight and void of the rotting undead. A faint misty rain, as if she was continuously walking through a cloud that had lowered to the ground, laid over her skin while her flashlight found the closest zombie. She was going to meet it straight ahead, its stiff body stumbling towards the front of the car. Out of the corner she noticed Sam’s flashlight flaring up and moving.

“There are more zombies heading in your direction,” Jody informed her. 

Janine heard chair wheels rolling over the ground in the comms shack, Maxine muttering something to herself, and she strengthened the grip around her gun. A few steps, a few seconds left before she’d close in for the kill. For the first time throughout this whole day she felt truly calm, didn’t just act like it. There was an objective right in front of her. And she would fulfill it.

“Mostly faster ones.” Jody closed her sentence. “I can count… at least ten. They’ll be with you guys in just a few minutes, coming in from the west.”

Reaching her arm back, to gain enough momentum, so the first hit would do the most crucial damage, Janine slammed the barrel of the shotgun across the zombie’s face which stood no chance. The zom fell to the ground instantly and with a slightly splattering thud. Towering over the almost still body Janine lunged once more, and once more, until even the last twitch in its fingers disappeared. She looked up to check on Sam, as she noticed the next closest zombie about ten meters away from him.

He had stopped in front of a tree that looked basically like all the others around and raised his head up, aiming his flashlight into the crown. Almost instantly, branches started rustling, seemingly urgently.

The next moment, a pair of legs appeared out of the darkness, dangling a few meters above his head. 

Five’s outworn yet trusted running shoes, that had been doing her and all of Abel a service for years now, were muddy; the skin on her shins was covered in thin, shallow cuts. Sam stepped closer as the runner slid down the tree, branch by branch, avoiding hasty movements that could cause her to fall, while simultaneously going as fast as she could manage. The lowest branch hovered at a height about a head away from his own. When Five took place on it he tucked the flashlight into the pocket of his sweater and held up his arms to half-catch the runner on her last step down, an attempt at softening the impact for her.

He had noticed it before already. But while it had been faint then, at this distance the smell of blood in the air was almost overwhelming. 

Five flinched when her feet met the ground, a suppressed hiss just barely covered by the sound of Janine striking out another zom some steps away. Her skin was warm, although she hadn’t moved an inch in almost half an hour, in the middle of the night, wearing no more than a thin shirt and shorts. Sam moved one hand to her upper arm and turned on the flashlight.

The dark spot spread out from her left waist, glistening in its center at the edge of her torso, just underneath her ribs, the light reflecting with the rhythm of her shallow breathing. 

From the way, Maxine had talked about it, he had known Five must have looked bad. The description still hadn’t prepared him to see it for himself though, the sight making his stomach sink.

Five pulled her hands back, swaying almost unnoticeably. _Looks worse than it is_ , she signed, but she avoided meeting his eyes as if he could notice something there that she didn’t want him to know about.

“What happened to you?” Sam whispered.

She pressed her lips together. _Aren’t you going to do the check-up?_ , she asked back instead and with that she started lifting the hem of the fabric. 

In all honesty, Sam was relieved he didn’t have to do that task himself. But just because he wasn’t directly causing it, it didn’t stop him from feeling nauseous.

He watched Five flinch, while she was agonizingly slowly tearing the fabric off the dried blood on her skin, her stomach rising and sinking rapidly, an involuntarily gasp escaping her when the injury came to light and to the cool air. 

Finally, the injury was visible in its entirety. He forced himself to take a closer look.

The wound was still – or again – bleeding, a single horizontal line wrapping around her lower waist, almost parallel to the ground. 

“Not a bite,” he said quietly. _Definitely_ not a bite, but geez-

Somebody in his headset let out a relieved sigh.

Five dropped the shirt and pulled her hands closer to her chest. She didn’t raise her head, kept her eyes on her own fingertips instead, as if she had to tremendously focus on signing everything properly, as if she had forgotten where her train of thoughts had run. _Shouldn’t have come, I would have made it_ , she insisted then, fingers trembling.

A heat started spreading in his cheeks, a sudden wave of frustration, a slight stab of mild offense. Why did she keep being like this? “Are you actually-? Seriously? Right when I can _see_ -”

“Sam, stop stalling!” Janine’s voice in his ear shook him awake, followed by a wet thud as a zombie fell to the ground way too close for comfort. “Get her to the _car, now!_ ” 

Right, they had to move. He had barely been listening to what Jody in his headset had been saying, all the while being too preoccupied with taking in Five’s miserable state, and himself being more of a mess than he would have liked to admit. He took her by the arm and led her forward.

 _Sorry_ , the runner signed after a few steps. _Lost the backpack._

Sam shook his head, a faint pang in the back of his throat. “Geez, Five, this isn’t- I mean-” 

He paused. Obviously, he didn’t want to dismiss that she was upset about the backpack. A part of him was, too. But it could never match up with the fact that she, in contrast to other people – other runners – was still alive. 

“Let’s just get you out of here.”

Although she still managed to move forward at all, Five kept tripping over her toes as her feet dragged across the ground, and her eyelids got heavier; as she fought to stay awake, although her eyes kept losing focus, like a broken camera lens. Everything was blurry and far away. Having seen them, Sam here and Janine in the distance, now, that she wasn’t alone anymore – her self-sustaining strength was swindling, dripping out of her with every heartbeat, every movement; logically speaking, with every drop of blood the cut was still leaking. It became easier to let go and relax into- something. And some part of her was relieved and enjoyed being supported. But she wasn’t used to it, which was for the most part because usually she didn’t even let it happen in the first place. So, the fact that getting help felt kind of nice – that wasn’t a good sign in her book.

One of her hands gripped weakly at Sam’s sleeve when Janine caught up to them. She glanced at Five, her expression ever so unreadable.

“We’re too slow,” Janine stated matter-of-fact and stopped, taking off her blood-splattered jacket and tying it around her waist, checking her skin for zombie remains. “There’s still more zoms coming, so we need to hurry up. Here, take the gun and give Five the flashlight.”

Sam hesitated for a moment. Then he carefully lifted Five’s arm off his shoulders, pushed the flashlight in her hand and took her fingers to curl around it, one by one. “Hold it. Tightly, hear me, Five? Tightly. Don’t drop it.” 

Five nodded but didn’t look up. The bright circle the light casted on the ground was shaking. Five heard Sam whispering something indistinguishable as he took the shotgun, heard leaves rustling and distancing hurried steps as he turned around to head for the rumbling car, while her eyes remained glued to the light and her mind focused on getting her hands under control. She needed to calm down. She needed to get a grip, in the most literal sense. She needed to-

Hands wrapped around the back of her knees and her shoulders, arms lifting her feet from the ground, her head leaning against Janine’s chest, when she was suddenly being carried off.

Five almost dropped the flashlight because of the surprise movement, and because of the sharp pain flaming up in her side, making her flinch hard. Janine gritted her teeth. “Sorry,” she whispered, walking steadily towards the street, while aware of how the steps she took were sending shockwaves through Five’s battered body. She knew how it felt but she also knew Five could make it through.

Sam closed the door behind Janine – after she had sat down Five on the right back-seat and gotten into the car on the other side – and locked the doors from within. Then he started the engine and turned the car around, just as a second zombie wave was approaching them from the other side of the forest. A few more minutes and they would have been surrounded.

“So, uh,” he started. “Jody, did you say something about someone else joining us? Because-” He cleared his throat. “I could swear I just heard something roaring, right before Janine arrived here with Five. And I mean, roaring as in an automobile of some sort.”

“I don’t think so?” she replied. “I mean- I have- No, Maxine hasn’t heard it either.”

“Maybe what you noticed on the cams before- I mean, you couldn’t tell what it actually was. Other than, that it was fast.”

“It hasn’t showed up again,” the runner said, subconsciously biting at her fingernail, until Maxine gently pulled her hand down. Well, it had been a stressful night, but she wanted to stay optimistic from now on. They had gotten this far already. “My guess is, there should be no problem if you get away before anything else arrives. Right?”

\--- 

Five was leaning against the window with the back of her head, her legs turned sideways, so her lower body was off the seat, her injured side facing slightly upwards. Janine sat on her knees, flashlight in one hand, pointing the beam at the blood. Her fingers were already at the hem of Five’s shirt, but then she stopped to give her a moment to prepare. 

“Not a bite,” she re-informed Maxine over the headset, after having lifted he fabric. 

Sam let out a long sigh. “Like I already said.”

“Looks like a cut,” she continued, without reacting to his remark. “By a knife, if I would have to guess. I’m not… I don’t think it’s too deep, but it will need stitching.” 

“A knife?” Maxine said, but Janine, and least of all Five herself, cared to elaborate.

She quickly turned away and reached far under the shotgun seat, getting to the emergency kit with just as much as her fingertip. Flashlight between her teeth, she opened the lid of the kit and rifled through its contents, inwardly cursing when she couldn’t find the actual equipment she would have needed. Of course, that had to be one of the things they hadn’t brought. Most likely because Abel had recently been low on medical supplies as it was. She looked back at Five who had noticed the frustration in her expression.

 _Keeps opening, doesn’t it_ , Five signed with an apologetic half-smile. Janine took her fingers in her own hand and softly pushed them down, to stop her from further talking; then she felt Five’s forehead.

“Running a fever.” 

Sam checked the rear mirror almost automatically. There was no way he would not _not_ try to check on Five although at the same moment he knew it was pretty much impossible to get a look at her from that angle- when something further down the road lit up. 

“Uhm-”

“It might be inflamed,” Maxine assumed, referring to Janine’s statement. “But we can treat it as soon as you all come back.”

A shattering sound exploded right next to the driver’s door, throwing off Sam so much and sudden he hit the brakes hard, without warning, and Janine managed to grab the edge of the back-seat just in time before she’d been catapulted against the dashboard. 

“What the-” She quickly propped herself up and tried to see through the front window, but Sam driving backwards pushed her all the way to the back-seat again, where she barely found space not to fall on Five. Maxine and Jody talking over each other mixed with the ringing in her ears and the roaring engine, and she couldn’t make out anything at all.

Something somewhere else cracked and instinctively she ducked down. As Sam turned the car around in a tight half-circle, tires screeching, she kept holding onto the cushion edge of the back-seat as well as the front-seat to balance herself and then they were headed back again. 

“What the hell is going on?!” Jody shouted the loudest now. “What were those- What’s happening?”

Janine cautiously rose back up and looked through the rear mirror. A row of headlights stared back at her. How many- she tried counting but somehow the lights shifted over one another, melted into each other-

With a deafening crash the rear window and the right front door window splintered into pieces, glass shards raining over mostly Janine as she shielded Five, and Sam who yelled and momentarily span the car out of control, swaying both of the back seat passengers from side to side as he struggled to maintain a steady hand on the wheel. The growling of engines creeped up closer and closer, now – without the shielding rear window – definitely audible. 

The engine he had heard before.

Sam sank down in his seat, as low as possible while still being able to see over the dashboard and onto the street. His heart was just about to beat out of his chest. That was not good. That was not good at all. 

Were _those_ the people who were after Five all this time? What did they want from her? Why didn’t they let go?

They raced by the point where they had stopped just minutes before to pick up Five, heading on north, further away from Abel. He shot a look at the left side window, one of the two windows that were still attached to the car. Then he dared to glance at the rear mirror. 

“Are these guys on motorcycles?” Sam blurted out, voice high, talking without thinking, when he finally understood why the lights had moved so weirdly. “Seriously?” 

He stepped on the gas. The three of them seemed to be a good distance ahead of the bikers now, and if it were for him he’d prefer to increase it as much as possible. God, that had been loud. The window- Both windows. They were just completely gone. Instead the cold wind now blew through the whole interior of the car. His skin was tingling where the bullet had missed his head by a few centimeters. It probably had been shot diagonally, from left to right, otherwise it couldn’t have shattered both windows at the same time, he assessed, trying to mentally reconstruct its way through the car and past- 

“Janine, Five? Are you okay?”

Janine picked some tiny shards of glass out of her hair, ignored the dull, hot pain in her shoulder and looked down at the runner. The smell of blood filled the air, especially at this distance, when she was practically on top of her. She had her eyes closed and her hand clutched around Janine’s, her chest rising and falling.

“We’re alive,” she replied dryly.

She lowered her head and forced her heartbeat to slow down. Their situation didn’t look good. The risk of peeking over the edge to count how many of the strangers were after them wasn’t worth it, because they were outnumbered either way. Trying to shoot them – and wasting valuable bullets – wasn’t an option either, since she could barely even distinguish them, with the lights shining right at her face, apart from the simple fact she couldn’t dare losing said face as a target. 

Their only option was to shake them off. 

“Jody,” Janine said. “We are being followed. I suppose, these are the same people that had cut off and followed Five for the past day. They’re shooting at our car.”

“They’re shooting?!” Maxine gasped.

“We’re headed back in the direction where we were going, away from Abel. I take you can see that on the monitor?”

“Yes,” Jody replied. Her voice was as calm as Janine’s now.

“I need you to keep navigating us further away.”

“A-Away?” Sam chipped in. 

“We have to lead them away from home.”

\--- 

“Did we actually lose them?” Sam barely dared to say it aloud. It did seem like the engines following them had subsided, he couldn’t hear them anymore. Cautiously he propped himself up high enough to be able to look in the rear mirror again. No headlights shined at him. 

“At least it doesn’t sound like anybody’s shooting at you.” 

“Okay… So, Jody, how does the road look up ahead? Anything we have to know about?” Sam led the car a tad to the left to avoid hitting a zom as it was strolling down the street. Not that he wanted it to survive – but the car had already sustained more than enough damage and he could only imagine the fun of one of the undead hitting the front window, which had been battered by numerous glass splinters, with full force and breaking through. Or what if a zombie slid across the whole car, even over the roof, but somehow got hold of the edge of the now missing rear window? Better not risk it.

“Well, the good thing is, there are more cameras ahead, so I’ll see more of all of you,” Jody began. “The not so good thing is, that’s because you’re getting closer to the city.”

That would explain the increase of roadkill zombies.

“But I’d suggest we get you to the outer edges of the town and then you can head back to Abel? In a wide circle around the forest of course. That should be enough distance.”

“I suppose this has to do,” he answered. Then he slightly turned his head. Not knowing what was going on behind him, especially when he finally had the chance to ask, was making him nervous. “Hey, uhm… How’s Five holding up?”

A screeching sound scratched across the left of the car and over the roof, as multiple shots grazed the exterior of the car, accompanied by multiple bangs from behind as well as a thundering noise, increasing in volume every few seconds.

Sam sank back into his seat, muttering to himself. Damn, he had truly thought they were off the hook by now. But, if anything, their pursuers had multiplied. It was just a matter of time until the front window, or some other vital part of the car, was going to be smashed. How long could they keep up that race?

“Five’s passed out,” Janine replied to his question from before. “A while ago, actually.” 

Almost unfazed by the fact that the strangers were still on their tails and kept missing them by mere centimeters – because she had expected them to come back soon – Janine focused on Five’s cut. Five had various less serious injuries from what Janine could tell, and while her medical expertise was by far no match for Dr. Myers’, she had a basic understanding of how to handle wounds in… well, _exceptional_ situations. At least, she knew how to treat them sufficiently, so the wounded could keep going for a few more hours, and she knew to focus on the most urgent injury first. 

A look at the scarcely equipped kit revealed gauze, band-aids and a small role of bandages, as well as rusty, blunt scissors and some unlabeled tape. Not much to work with, maybe enough for just this one wound.

“Maxine, I will try to stop the bleeding.”

That was when a blinking light on the dashboard, accompanied by a typical blinking sound, caught Sam’s attention. 

“Oh,” he said, right as another shot passed by them. 

That was it. They were doomed.

“We’re low on fuel.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> * The backpack is a reference to the ZR 5k Trainer~
> 
> Yeay, a little more action! And a little longer chapter than usual :)  
> Hope, some of you still like it, but either way I'd always appreciate what you guys think about it!
> 
> \---
> 
> (I'm sorry if there's mistakes in some car terms, I don't even have a license... Also, recently my living situation has changed so sometimes circumstances are... obstructing my concentration....)


	4. The seat was empty

Jody and Maxine were listening intently, quite literally standing on edge, as they had abandoned their seats behind them. There was only so much they could do, being stuck in the shack, almost 100 kilometers away at this point, and the tension caused by their helplessness started to take its toll. 

“Just- Just keep heading for the city,” Jody said, eyes darting over the monitors, but not catching sight of the battered car there. Then she stared at the map – maybe there was a way out, a hidden path where bikes couldn’t follow, if she just looked at it long enough… “We’ll figure something out. We always do.”

“Cars give that warning way too early,” Maxine added. “You should- you will be fine.”

“Really?” Sam flinched when another bullet ricocheted off the car. “I don’t- Damn, how did we not check-”

“We have spare fuel in the trunk,” Janine spoke up. 

“How much?”

“Two canisters, 10 liters. Enough.”

Sam crunched the numbers in his head, estimated how much fuel the car burned; considering the distance they still had to cover, the model and size of the car, his currently less than ideal driving style stemming from the fact that they were being shot at by strangers on motorcycles- The result seemed rather pessimistic. “That’s barely enough, if at all.”

Janine didn’t answer. 

Instead she held her flashlight between her teeth and prepared the gauze. The car was consistently shaking, and so was the light. The movement of the flashes darting across the interior of the car, as it was short of flying over the rocky road, gave Janine a slight headache, more out of annoyance than actual disorientation. She barely managed to keep up her stance on her knees without falling from side to side, while at the same time she risked being seen by the shooters, if she straightened her back too much. 

Janine opened one of their water bottles and sloppily poured half of it over Five’s waist, trying to get rid of part of the dried blood still stuck to her skin. It didn’t do all that much. And it couldn’t replace an antiseptic, which was what Janine regretted the most right now.

Okay. Breathing in. Moving on. Getting the supplies ready that she had on hand, getting the most out of these at least.

In a split-second moment of steadiness and precision Janine pressed the gauze directly on the cut, hard and with as much pressure as she could come up with. Five woke up instantly, winding under her hand and reaching out to try and push Janine off her. Swiftly Janine got hold of Five’s right arm and pressed it against the back of Sam’s seat. 

It wasn’t the worst she had ever seen, not by far. Not the worst wound she had ever treated either. It was just a first with Five right now, someone she had never wanted to have succumb to something like this. She avoided looking at Five directly; the short glimpse of her face in pain and her silent scream, her back pressing down into the cushioned seat and away from the pressure, that was more than enough to make her feel a light stab in her own stomach. At least, no one else had to see this, with Sam focusing on the road, and Jody and Maxine – although Maxine would obviously have lesser qualms about it – not being here with them.

Finally, long seconds had passed and the straining in Five’s muscles weakened, her body going limp.

Janine didn’t lose any time. She slightly pulled Five’s legs off the edge of the seat and turned her body to lay on her side, cut facing up. It was a damned hassle, having to position herself and Five in the small space of the backseat while keeping pressure on the wound, but it worked out eventually. Then she applied the bandages and fixed them with the tape. Without Five – rightfully – protesting, those last steps were achieved comparatively quickly. 

Fixing her up like this was only a short-term temporary measure, a means to keep her afloat, to bridge the way back home. As soon as Five would just as much as stand up, the pressure would easily loosen again.

She hoped, for Five’s sake, that she’d stay unconscious.

Then Janine noticed the silence. 

Yes, the car’s engine was still running, a monotonous, constant background vibration, and the fuel warning was still … well, warning them, but… 

“They stopped shooting,” Janine said. 

She risked a peek over the edge of the broken window. The lights were gone. 

“They did,” Sam answered flatly. “A few minutes ago. I guess, you were too focused… to notice.”

“Okay.” She breathed out. “Finally. That’s good.”

“Yah. Good.” He sounded far from meaning it.

Janine leaned forward between the front seats, the wind coming in from behind her ruffling the hair on the back of her neck, as she looked down the road, alert. “What is it?” Was there another problem straight ahead of them? Maybe a road block?

Sam cleared his throat. “We lost communication.”

Janine paused. “We did _what_?”

He took his headset off and placed it on the dashboard, as if to prove a point. “You can try talking to them.” There was a certain spite in his voice that Janine couldn’t quite place; she didn’t take it was directed at her. “In my headset, at least, nothing’s coming through.” 

Maxine and Jody – who would have heard him talking at this distance – didn’t object, so Janine didn’t bother. With a sigh, she leaned back and sat down, watching Five.

“I guess we’re in the range Five was before,” Sam continued. “They must have set up something that cuts off frequencies. For some reason. Or maybe it wasn’t them. Maybe…” He let his gaze wander over the road. “Maybe it’s something else in the city.”

“We have to fill up,” Janine said. “Now.” While Five was out of it. It’s been only minutes since she had passed out, but the runner had already started tossing her head and signing fragments of phrases and names that hadn’t been used in a long time. At this rate, it wasn’t long until she woke up. 

Sam wordlessly stopped the car at the side of the road and turned around to face Janine. She gave him the baseball bat and kept the shotgun to herself. 

“I’ll fill up. You are the lookout. Guard the other side of the car, especially Five’s door and the big rear window gap. Make sure she doesn’t get out.”

“Why would she-”

Without another word, Janine was out of the door, flashlight in her hand, and fumbling open the trunk. 

Sam stepped out and scanned the area but there wasn’t much to see. The one functioning light of their car was the only light source, once again, and anything that wasn’t engulfed in that light – like the roughly two or three piles of whatever was left of some zombies, lying in the middle of the street – had a perfect opportunity to sneak attack them, coming from the darkness. He couldn’t shake the feeling that they were going to be surrounded very soon. 

Janine shut the trunk a little louder than Sam would have liked. The first zombie moan was already audible, so it was close enough to be with them before Janine would be even close to done with the fuel.

The city’s scenery melted into the night sky. It was barely standing out against the dark, since the electricity went down and the street lights stopped working, probably years ago at this point. A shudder ran down Sam’s back, just by thinking about how crowded it must be in there. And how little you would be able to see.

In his opinion they were already too close to it. 

He pulled his eyes off the impenetrable darkness and turned to the window behind him to look at Five. 

She had sat up, staring at him through the glass, but squinting as the flashlight found her pale face. Knees pulled up to her chest, Five hugged her legs with one arm while she kept the other closer, around her waist. A sheet of sweat was glistening on her skin and she was shivering. No wonder, it had gotten quite cold tonight. Had they not brought a blanket?, Sam wondered, and made a mental note to mention it as soon as Janine was done.

Sam tilted his head and lightly raised his hand to signify something along the line of “Hey there, it’s okay”; but she kept her lips pressed together and her jaw tense, not answering. Suddenly her eyes widened and she covered her mouth with her hands, sliding further away on the seat. For some reason, she behaved like a cornered animal.

Then the reason moaned directly in Sam’s ear.

And Sam flinched hard, swirling around frantically, and taking a strike out with the bat, sinking into soft mass, but he had instinctively put both hands on the blunt weapon, so the flashlight dropped the ground, followed by a tiny shattering sound, and then he was engulfed in darkness.

He bashed the zom two, three more times, until he was relatively sure the brain was destroyed, then he stumbled towards the car to find the door flung open, almost running into its sharp corner, and immediately he let his hands search, wander over the rough fabric of the interior, although he already knew what the open door meant, and he knew he had been far enough and busy enough to not hear it opening or Five’s steps as she had walked away from them, and the alarm signal in his head was screeching long before his fingertips grazed the smears of cold blood.

The seat was empty.

“Oh-” _No no no no no no._

He looked up, through the window to the other side. It seemed Janine hadn’t even noticed Five was gone because she herself was busy being attacked by zoms. And she had a job already; it had been _his_ to watch Five and he had messed up. 

Shit. Stop. Focus. Breath. Focus. Don’t get dizzy, for Christ’s sake- Find her. Find her. Find her.

She couldn’t have gone far. Could she even run? Sam wasn’t sure. She could do a lot if she wanted to. She had done a lot. Where would she go? Ahead? Into the forest? Back? 

Why would she go in the first place?

Was her condition that bad?

Okay. Decide. Just go for it, first hunch, intuition, always worked. Almost always. Often enough. 

There was no time.

Decide.

Sam strengthened the grip on the bat and headed down the road, away from the car’s light. For someone who didn’t know what was going on, and that was what he had to assume of Five right now, strictly following the road would seem logical, right? And since him and the surprise zom had been in the way, rolling on the ground next to the front door, there was only the other direction to go. It was his best bet. Sam walked faster.

There was something moving in front of him, a silhouette vaguely outlined against the horizon, just about 20 meters away from the car. Staggering, swaying. He couldn’t deny it might have been just his mind playing a trick on him, showing him something for wish fulfillment; there was no way his eyes were _that_ good, seeing in the dark _that_ well. 

He would direct his focus onto what he could hear. 

Behind him Janine was busy with another zombie, her grunts peppered in between smacking hits and thuds to the ground when the dead bodies fell, and Sam wondered if there would ever come a time when she’d resort to using the bullets. A breeze went through tree crowns to his left side, making the leaves rustle, but there were no steps coming from that direction. No steps from behind him either. There were only his own and, unevenly rhythmed and undeniably slower than him, the ones of the shadow he had seen – or imagined – upfront. 

Since the sound was shuffling away from the car, and thus away from the living, it didn’t seem to be a zombie.

“… Five?” Sam whispered when he was almost caught up and the shadow stopped in its tracks, flinching. 

At least she recognized her name.

And then Five ran-stumbled away, deeper into the dark.

“Five!” Sam blurted out, louder than intended, and if Janine hadn’t noticed what had happened yet, she sure as hell knew now. 

Still, he darted forward, reaching out, and he got his left arm wrapped around Five, and he pulled her closer towards him by increasing the pressure against her collarbone and right arm, against the resistance she put up. It seemed she was trying to punch him, her knuckles grazing his cheek and just barely missing his eye, her hand hitting the back of his own hand on her shoulder, but she couldn’t keep it up for longer than just a few seconds before her knees gave in. She slumped backwards against him, about to slip away from under his grip. 

Then a sharp pain shot through his left forearm.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Alright then!
> 
> I wanted to finish this before Season 6 starts, but I'm starting to realize it'll be a close call - or I might not manage to do that at all. There will be only one or two more chapters of this though, so either way it won't be long anymore x) 
> 
> Thanks so much for reading! I hope you still like it :) And whatever it is, I'm always happy to read what you think about it~


	5. Sunrise

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sliiiiightly gory cw for the squeamish (not too explicit though)

She had not just- 

_Nonononono- Don’t think about it, don’t even think that word-_ But it was there, it was loud, it was right in front of his eyes, shining in neon colors and demanding attention no matter how much he would shake his head and turn his face away; even brighter than the sensation in his arm, it was there and it needed to be seen, acknowledged, but it just couldn’t be true-

It couldn’t be her. 

It couldn’t have happened to her, right?

She hadn’t been bitten. 

Right?

Had she been scratched, though? 

Had she gotten to close to one of them, had just a tiny speck of infected matter, an incredibly small sample of the virus somehow found its way into her bloodstream and spread and-

_turned-_

\---- 

Finally, the last drop of fuel poured into the car. Instantly Janine flung the empty canisters back into the trunk and slammed it shut, whirling around just in time to push off another zom that had almost sneaked up on her. At least it seemed to be the last one for now. Another wave would arrive soon, definitely, but they would get ahead easily and without many zombies blocking the way if they started now.

Glass clattered under her shoes when Janine stepped to the side and found the backseat door flung wide open.

\---

Five’s weight dropped against him, unexpectedly, as her knees gave way and she collapsed to the ground.

But the pressure on Sam’s arm, the bite, didn’t disappear with her. 

Teeth sank deeper into his flesh, as the weight of the zombie was tearing down his arm – the arm that had just in the right moment shielded Five – as it took advantage of his surprise and pushed against him even more forcefully, its claws grabbing at his skin.

He bit his tongue just in time to keep himself from drawing more attention to themselves. He already heard another one coming up from behind, a faster one this time, and Five was still laying somewhere in the middle of the road, in the dark, open. He had to shake this one off somehow, take care of the fast one; the white-hot pain proved to be incredibly distracting though. 

Sam tried turning around to at least sort of drag his arm out of its jaws, but the zombie was locked down and just stumbled with. At least now they both moved away from where he assumed Five was, so that was something. But- if he could just make it let go for good. With increasing desperation he blindly swung the bat through the dark, hoping to hit the zom’s head or literally anything else connected to its body, just somewhere to make it lose its footing or lessen its force, to make it stop, goddamn. 

There was only air in front of him, though, the hits passing through nothing, and how could he miss the head so many times??, and the steps behind him progressed, closer, almost here, as they were more and more drowned out by Sam’s own blood rushing through his head. There was too much going on and nothing worked and he didn’t know where to go first, because how could he get Five back if this god-forsaken zom latched onto him like a rabid dog-

Finally he slowed down, just for a second, and tried to re-focus on his hearing.

He could handle it. He just had to be fast, and then he had to pick up Five and run for it, towards the car and Janine- 

A white light illuminated the undead in front of him, now vividly close, and Sam reached back and bashed the bat at its head sideways, and it finally – finally, finally – let off. Still, it wasn’t satisfied, and one blow wasn’t quite enough for it to fall over, so he served it another hit and another and one more, until it ultimately dropped to the ground and stayed there. 

When he turned around, hands shaking and blood dripping from his arm, Janine shined the flashlight right into his face. Judging from her silhouette she was carrying Five over her shoulder. 

The pain in his arm started growing stronger with every beat of his heart. His head felt floaty. He deeply inhaled and steadied himself, hands on his knees, eyes focused on the ground. _Get a grip. Calm down. Calm down. Breathe._ “… Fuck.”

“Are you done now?” The light disappeared. Janine had turned away from him and stepped towards the car.

Almost stumbling over his own feet, Sam caught up with her. “Is Five-”

“Apart from the obvious – which is the gaping wound in her stomach area that she re-opened as she escaped from _your watch_ , Mr. Yao – Runner Five has not sustained any additional injuries.”

\--- 

After Janine silently took the wheel and Sam just as silently accepted her former place in the backseat with Five, he noticed Five was still – or again – awake. Fresh blood had soaked through the improvised bandage Janine had put on her, and she was as pale as a ghost. Her frantic movements had worsened the injury to the point where she was barely conscious. But the additional blood loss should at least keep her more passive this time around. Hopefully no more running away.

Five’s eyes opened wide as she watched Sam wrapping his arm in his own sweater. The little first aid material they had brought was barely enough for Five, who was in way more need of it than him, and he was okay with a make-shift bandage for the short while they’d need back home anyway. Even more so, the thicker the wrapping was that he used for the temporarily zombie-infected injury the better. Best to keep away from both Five and Janine for at least the rest of the night. He knew, back at Abel he had basically boasted about being immune but he hadn’t actually asked to proof it. 

At least it was just one zom this time. 

A movement out of the corner of his eye caught his attention. 

Five was signing, her hands shaking like leaves when she raised them, and all he hoped for in this moment was that she was the right kind of awake. The broken window behind them might still be an interesting exit for her, he reckoned. Maybe they should have put her on the shotgun seat and put on the door lock or something.

_You’ve been bitten_ , she signed, stating the obvious. She stumbled over her own words, in her own kind of way. 

Sam just nodded; he didn’t dare to make a sound yet. Janine wasn’t loud about it, her anger was contained for now so Five could stay in a rather calm state, but she was still the farthest from happy. 

_Because of me_ , Five continued. _I’m sorry._

Sam couldn’t remember the last time he had seen Five crying. He knew, the first months, maybe years, since she had come to Abel it was more often: silent tears at every funeral – no matter whether she knew the deceased or not – angry tears, exhausted tears, but never much. It just happened silently and she let it happen and she let people see, and it was never hard enough crying to make her face crunch all up. Over time it’s gotten less and less. He never really mentioned it – because what would have been the use and who likes being asked about their crying habits anyway? – he just noticed she had stopped at some point, and he had wondered whether there was still something of it left or where it had gone or whether it was a conscious choice of self-control or not. 

Her shoulders were shaking and she was hastily sucking in air. And as she ultimately looked like she’d collapse in on herself every moment, as she looked so unusually small, it was clear how miserable Five was. Sam couldn’t watch it for long, but as he was about to say something, she already raised her head. Her eyes were dry and empty and turned to look out the broken rear window.

Because it had been more than a day since they found him the last (and first) time he got bitten, Sam had no clear idea how long afterwards he was “unsafe”. He wanted to lay a hand on Five’s outstretched leg and tell her that all of this wasn’t that bad and she shouldn’t worry about it, and even more so he had wanted to give her an actual hug ever since they picked her up from that tree; but the way she was injured made both of these impossible. He couldn’t guarantee he wasn’t still somehow contagious. 

So, instead he took the tip of her shoe with two fingers and slightly wiggled it, drawing her attention to him. 

“Five, I’ll be fine,” he said quietly. “I won’t die of this, you know that.”

Her eyes widened, surprised. It made her look years younger. _You’ll be okay? Really?_ , she signed. 

“I’m… immune. To the zombie virus thing. Don’t you remember?” 

Five didn’t answer, but she slowly let her drawn-up shoulders drop, the tension caused by the heavy guilt leaving her muscles. 

If only he or Janine could check her temperature now. Her fever must have been through the roof, causing her to run away and apparently turn her back in time. 

Softly clattering, a headset appeared in between the two.

“Sam, put it on. We’re reaching Maxine and Jody again,” Janine said without turning around. “Yes, I’m driving,” she replied into the microphone. “Sam has been bitten.”

“What?!”

“In the arm. Which is why I’m driving. It happened when Five ran away.”

“Why did she-"

“She’s feverish, she sees things, it seems. She hasn’t told us anything. But she forgot Sam’s immune so I assume some similar thought made her want to escape.”

“Is she awake?” Maxine asked.

“She… is awake,” Janine answered with a bit of hesitation and a glance in the rearview mirror. “but it’s not clear how aware she is. Either way, we have two questions here, for each of you: How long until it’s somewhat safe to handle Sam or – let me rephrase – for Sam to look after Five while I’m driving; and, what route we should take back.”

“On it,” Jody answered plainly as she zoomed out the map. 

Sam onehandedly adjusted the headset and cleared his throat. His arm was burning. The pain made him a little dizzy, or maybe it was some left-over adrenaline, or maybe it was the mere fact that he was hyper-aware of the bite and what it meant. “Hey, Maxie.”

“How are you feeling, Sam?”

“Uhm.” He took a breath. “Well, it- it hurts quite a lot to be honest.” He felt her eyes on him and turned away from Five. “But it’ll go away?”

“It’s exactly like last time then?” Maxine sounded somewhat cautious. “No raised temperature, or feeling like you got the flu –”

“It’s exactly as pleasant as the first times, yes, but apart from that- nothing strange. So, what do you say, how long?”

“Until you’re not contagious? I think, judging by the amount of infections your body defended against last time, at this point your immune system might work really fast. According to the tests we did back then, an hour should be enough but… you know, best to avoid contact for longer. Just to make sure. We wouldn’t have wanted all of you to go through this trouble to get to Five and then... Oh, I think Jody’s got something for you. We’ll talk in a minute.”

“Okay.” Sam leaned back into his corner of the seat. 

He had avoided looking at his arm more closely for now, because for some reason seeing his own injuries was still worse than seeing others’, and those were bad enough already. After a deep breath, he decided to take the risk. 

There wasn’t much to see anyway. It wasn’t an incredibly deep bite, but because of the way he had tried to pull his arm out of it, it would leave another scar. One more or less wasn’t making much of a difference at this point, he figured.

“So, you suggest we take the long route back? All around the forest in the northwest, then even more south and then end the loop at Abel – so we can make sure no one’s followed us, is what you’re saying,” Janine recapped her conversation with Jody. 

“Will the car keep up?” Jody asked.

“We have just filled up the tank, we can manage that detour. We’ll be back home at around sunrise then.”

“Sunrise,” Sam repeated quietly. That meant… about three more hours. Then they were finally back home. All of them.

Five had closed her eyes and her head was turned to the side as her arms hugged her upper body, her one leg still outstretched, her other hanging from the seat. She shivered slightly – no wonder with the wind blowing in from behind them. 

Something rustled and suddenly Janine stretched back her arm, wordlessly holding her jacket into Sam’s direction. 

\--- 

Almost two hours later, which Sam had mostly spent looking out the window and listening to Janine muttering under her breath, Five started stirring. She pulled her legs closer to herself, Janine’s jacket dropped off her. Sam glanced at the clock on the board and, assuming he was mostly safe now, he threw his sweatshirt on the unmanned front seat, picked up the jacket and lifted Five’s back to put it around her shoulders, while carefully keeping his left arm as far as possible away from her. That was when he noticed her hands moving. 

Sam winced as he realized what she was signing in her sleep. 

Cautiously he finished wrapping the jacket around her and placed his hand on hers, holding it, stopping her. Her breaths were shaky, short of the sobbing kind of shaky, but her cheeks were still dry.

“Was that why you ran away before?” he whispered, not expecting an answer or even thinking she might hear him at all. Naturally she didn’t react. 

“Did you think she was there?”

Suddenly a hitched breath, and Five opened her eyes. He might have imagined a slight glimmer in them when they met his, but even if he didn’t, within a blink it was gone. She took a deep breath, blinking, re-orienting.

“Hey, Five,” Sam said. “You were dreaming, that’s why-” His eyes darted to her hands. Then he let go of them and leaned down to catch one of the water bottles he had fished out from under the seat before, handed it to her. Tentatively she put it to her mouth. “Are you okay?”

A slight nod. She looked down.

“I mean…” Sam sat back. “You didn’t remember some things before, you know. I’m just- I’m just wondering what else did you-” Sam wasn’t sure how to bring it up without it hurting Five and figured there was probably no way he could. But there was also just no way she had properly worked through the whole matter if it still affected her so much that it gave her these kinds of fever dreams.

“Were you looking for her?” he finally asked. “On the road? Was that why-”

Her hands started trembling, squeezing the plastic bottle, pressing them as hard together as she did her lips.

“… I miss her, too. Sara.”

Five closed her eyes and held her breath and finally hid her face behind her hands. 

“I… I’m sorry, I know it’s not comparable… I mean, I- I’m thinking about what she would say to you right now, but… nothing feels right. Nothing I could come up with, at least. I suppose you know better than me. What she would say. You’ve probably thought of it way long ago, too, of course you did. I just wish she could… be here for you. Really, I’m so sorry.”

After a long minute, Five nodded and let her hands sink. Her cheeks were still dry. 

_I miss her, too._

\--- 

All three of them sat like that for a while, surrounded by only the vibrating low hum that traveled through the interior of the car. This was peaceful, in its own twisted, apocalyptic way, Five thought. Almost enjoyable. Like a road trip. 

The pain in her stomach had settled for a dull pulsing that made breathing kinda hard; and although the fact that it grew more distant by the minute should have been alarming, she decided to rather enjoy her mind drifting away. It was a welcome change. Not having all the cogs in her brain running on high speed. Letting someone else do the doing and thinking.

“…about to…loop, heading north…”

Janine.

With some effort Five blinked her eyes open – she couldn’t remember when she had closed them – and took a peak through the front window.

"We're home."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Why do I wanna make my Five cry so much? *shrug emoji* Who knows.
> 
> Sorry it took me so long to finish this, I was kinda spiritually dead, you know how it is sometimes^^
> 
> Thanks so so much for reading, you guys, no matter if you stuck with me all the way through or if you're here, giving this a chance for the first time~ I really appreciate it!
> 
> See you around, maybe!


End file.
